But here goes: It's a jungle out there, and even the carnivores are starving. We'd be shocked if the Nets invest more than just a few bucks (think league minimum for a 13th man) after the free agent market opens next week, and we're talking fall-through-the-cracks September guys.

Think times aren't so tough?

Then maybe you haven't heard the Nets are no longer going to scout opponents.

You heard right: Paul Cormier, who was absurdly overqualified to begin with, was let go last week, because the Nets (and Spurs....and Wizards) are no longer going to do any advance scouting. They'll rely on some kind of networking arrangement, with regional scouts who can punch in the play calls and sync it with video and send it along to the staff a day or two before they play Team X.

Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. Some people think it will save money. Others think it's idiotic.

But that's just the start of things. Throughout the league, GMs are finding religion (you had to hear the guff Ernie Grunfeld put up with at the last Board of Governors meeting, for giving Flip Saunders 4/18M), and recognizing that their head coaches are so overpaid, there's nothing left in the budget for a full staff.

Dave Cowens is walking away from Mike Curry's staff in Detroit, and they're saying the Pistons may try to get by with only two or three assistant coaches. The Nets would suffer the same fate, but their four assistant coaches have agreed to take huge pay cuts.

Unfair? Who's to say? We're all going through it, obviously. And it's not nearly as Draconian as the methods used on the other side of the organization. Put it this way: Last September 1, the Nets employed 120 people. Today, they employ 80. And only a handful of those people - maybe three or four people -- were from the basketball ops side.

Bottom line: Regardless of what Thorn says in the next few weeks, he's no longer at liberty to inflate the payroll - perhaps not even if some Grand Slam S&T that drops in his lap.